An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-18
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Aubrey McCarthy (IND), University of Dublin

I will take the Senator up on that advice. I certainly need the exercise.
Recently, "Prime Time" featured a senior garda from the National Cyber Crime Bureau. He issued a stark warning about young people and children in Ireland who are being groomed on online gaming platforms. He went on record saying that it is happening at an alarming scale. The issue here is that parents assume the everyday games that children play in Ireland are safe, as they are in the safety of their own rooms. However, these cartoon avatars are basically predators deliberately grooming and targeting children, gaining trust and, in some cases, manipulating them into sharing images and then using those images to control or extort them. In just 15 months, the Garda has said it is dealing with 55 Irish children who were victims. It is dealing with thousands, but 55 Irish children were actually victims of online sexual abuse. Those are real lives and real trauma that families have to deal with. The fallout from that will be huge.
The threat seems to be shifting. Offenders are now using all of the AI-generated images, fake profiles and in-game chats. They are reaching children and parents are not able to control this. They are not able to carry this burden alone. We need proper leadership in the area. We need a joined-up national child online safety plan. I saw one, It Takes A Village, in Greystones, which is an absolutely phenomenal initiative that should be rolled out nationally. We also need mandatory safety standards on gaming platforms, which have been discussed in this House previously. Education is also huge for children to know that when they are in their rooms on their own, this is a potential issue that could affect them. We need real penalties for the companies that are in breach of this and fail to protect young users. If this were happening outside the school gates, we would all be up in arms here. The fact it is happening in silence, and affecting children silently, does not make it any less serious.
Will the Ministers for justice and communications, because this is an interagency piece, come before the House to address this as a matter of urgency? Children in Ireland need protection. Those 55 children were let down by us. At this stage, offenders know that Ireland is a potential soft target. I wanted to leave that with the Deputy Leader. We have had the warning; now we need to act on it.
On behalf of the Independent Group, I thank so much the Seanad team, led by Martin, and all the team in Leinster House, for looking after us all year. A happy Christmas to all.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-18